Ukrainians in Germany targeted by fake news about Kyiv collecting men's data for mobilisation

Oleksii Makeiev, Ukraine's Ambassador to Germany, has warned of a fake letter which has been circulating on social media that purports to come from the embassy and seeks to collect data on Ukrainian men of draft age in Germany. 

Source: Makeiev on Facebook, reported by European Pravda.

Details: The fake letter, framed as a request to the German Foreign Ministry, supposedly asks the German migration service to provide data on adult men participating in pro-Ukrainian demonstrations in Germany "so that it can be sent to the military enlistment offices at the place of registration of the Ukrainian citizens". 

Makeiev pointed out a number of telltale signs that the letter could not be authentic, starting with the fact that the request to the German institution was written in Ukrainian. 

"I would love to be an ambassador who can send out instructions to German ministries in Ukrainian and stamped ‘Urgent request!’! I would write grammatically, though, and not rename German departments as I saw fit. And I would have used the correct form and used a registration number instead of a random sequence of numbers. But the Russian fake news industry doesn’t care about details. Their lie factory is concerned with content," Makeiev commented.

He also pointed out that the request suggests that the embassy is asking for data on all men who attend demonstrations, not just Ukrainian citizens. Furthermore, he added, it would be strange to believe that a democratic Germany would keep records of the citizens who attend demonstrations in support of Ukraine. 

"But just in case: we do not collect any such information and do not plan to collect it. We have more important things to do. Still, it's nice that the Russians can see the steady increase in Germany's military support for Ukraine, are scared by it, and clumsily refer to it as 'more frequent actions in support of the Ukrainian army'," added Makeiev. 

Background:

• German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that the EU countries are not doing enough to support Ukraine.
• Ukraine and Germany recently held another round of talks on their agreement on security guarantees.

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